Family Values Fascism: From Vichy to Donald Trump

Terrific stuff from Dean (including a fun paragraph you left out) ; thank you.

“Liberals enjoy their outrage. Here Trump confirms for them their rightness in despising the Republican base, itself only seldom anything other than their own disgust for the working class.”

Every child of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S. is an American citizen. So “keeping the families together” means deporting U.S. citizens.

I have no doubt that Trump disapproves of birthright citizenship, but it’s been the law in the U.S. since the 14th Amendment.

I thought it meant he was the last one before le Pen, but I guess that would actually be a penpenultimate reactionary.

@11 This is very good. But please don’t forget the kids and grand-kids. Cheers.

“In case you missed it, controlled immigration is in, open borders is out, for many on the left, the center, and the right. There’s nothing remotely fascist about that, sorry.”

Shorter kidneystones: If everyone endorses fascist ideas, the ideas cease being fascist.

Well, this would make for an interesting general election debate:

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

“End birthright citizenship. This remains the biggest magnet for illegal immigration. By a 2:1 margin, voters say it’s the wrong policy, including Harry Reid who said “no sane country” would give automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.”

Make Mexico Pay For The Wall. In short, the Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners. They are responsible for this problem, and they must help pay to clean it up.

The cost of building a permanent border wall pales mightily in comparison to what American taxpayers spend every single year on dealing with the fallout of illegal immigration on their communities, schools and unemployment offices.

Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options]. We will not be taken advantage of anymore. “

But I love it when combined with this one:

” Defend The Laws And Constitution Of The United States.
America will only be great as long as America remains a nation of laws that lives according to the Constitution. No one is above the law. The following steps will return to the American people the safety of their laws, which politicians have stolen from them: “

Several states recently passed packages of propositions and constitutional amendments intended to “protect 2nd Amendment rights”. If a citizen born in the United States of a mother who is an ‘illegal’ asserts his 2nd Amendment right to shoot the agent who comes to deport him to Mexico, which constitutional right prevails?

I think the experience of monarchy and aristocratic government has inculcated a minimum of healthy disdain for the rich and powerful in most the world – while the American founding myth had from the beginning successfully separated ideologically the rich and powerful in these a United States from their aristocratic historical context.

Plume: I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. In the broad sense yes, America is very willing to what rich people have to say and Donald Trump is absolutely a beneficiary of that, but I don’t think that really explains what’s happening right now. (The fact that he was able to rise to fame in the first place in his “The Art of the Deal” days has more to do with that, though.) On the one hand, if you look at Republican nomination plenty of people who are not exactly plutocrats (although they’re often rich in the 1% sense) who get similar attention. On the other hand very few plutocrats get the sort of attention that Donald Trump gets. The most politically active billionaires are the Koch Brothers, who take an indirect approach after some failed experiments running for politics. Limiting yourself to elected politics you can look at Michael Bloomberg, and he really doesn’t have much popular support outside of New York City. Not every plutocrat can just run a semi-successful presidential campaign like Trump has: he’s a very unique person in this respect.

And on the third hand, Trump is a real estate mogul. He has done some things in the business world which hurt a lot of people, and if capitalism is inherently corrupt then he has certainly appropriated a lot of wealth. But the industry of which he is a captain is not the most powerful.

the interest in preserving families trumps the literal language of the Constitution , and the need to provide justice to the adults trumps the literal interpretation of what to do with the children

It sounds like you’re saying it’s OK to deport American citizens who have in no way violated the law. Is this actually what you’re saying?

Trump poses serious problems for both ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’. The problem for ‘conservatives’ is that Trump says what they mean. The problem for ‘liberals’ is that Trump says what they (the ‘conservatives’) mean, thus depriving ‘liberals’ of the fun and profit of doing it. In spite of the problems, we’re all going to have a lot of fun with Trump, but I fear the hangover.

As for the Thurber cartoon, I can totally see it.

Methinks the meaning of jouissance here isn’t “deriving joy from something”. It’s more the enjoyment of rights in the legal sense, in this case the rights that plutocrats have by virtue of being stinky rich. “The truth pf enjoyment” is quite a misleading phrase.

Phillip Roth has written a pretty fine novel on the coming of Trump to American politics. In the book Trump is played by Charles Lindbergh. There is no doubt at all that people of whatever nationality and culture can be swayed by purely racist arguments. All it takes is a seasoning of fear. America may well be on the brink of this abyss, with one of the two major political parties pushing for all it’s worth. Mr. Trump is mostly just louder and less subtle the some of the other candidates. Huckabee is pretty much at the same volume.

This is seriously sloppy work on your part, I’m afraid and far below your usual standard.

kidneybollocks appears to be using an automated trolling machine, which is a sad reflection on the state of handcrafted trolling these days.

Layman@15: are you really saying that the idea of controlled immigration is fascist?

Because if you are, you may not have appreciated the dangers. What kidneystones is saying, in a rather brusque fashion, is that many people from all across the political spectrum, left to right, approve of controlled immigration and do not approve of open borders. To reply “That’s a fascist idea”, if it has any effect at all, will make some people wonder if fascism was really all that bad. (It was, of course).

For parallel cases: Hitler was a fanatical non-smoker and vegetarian, and admired classical architecture. Are these therefore fascist ideas?

I think that the “politics of enjoyment” and “family values fascism” both miss the true dynamics here.

The rise of Trump is a “rightwing populist” move, enabled by the extreme fracture in the US GOP.

He’s hitting a ceiling at about 25-30% support among GOP voters, and will probably hit around the same ceiling for all voters. Thus, he cannot win the general election. But during the GOP primaries he can hold a commanding plurality until most of the other candidates are exhausted, which will not be for several months to come.

Trump would already be aware of this dynamic, just by observing the winnowing process of the contestants on his own television game-shows. Thus Trump is looking forward to several months of being everybody’s favorite and/or most notorious contestant, — a high “Q score”, as they say in the entertainment industry — and baby, that’s going to be worth more money in the bank.

Plus, he gets to help the GOP by weeding-out the field of candidates.

Where will it go from here? At this point, the speculation bogs down in confusion because we are often incapable of divorcing the contingencies of the moment from the epochal crisis.

The epoch is the end of economic logic as we have received it for a few hundred years. But probably not in this election. Although: ensuring that Obamacare remains a success would make a tiny step further in that direction.

Contingently, Hillary could be the first female President.

And contingently, the GOP brand is unlikely to aright itself in this go-round; it’s got demographic problems with youth and Hispanics.

HOWEVER, Hillary is not a real human being on video camera. She distinctly lacks a high “Q score”, which is sometimes entirely a camera problem: You’re okay in person, but you look bad on screen.

Thus, Trump presents a real danger to the Democrats, because he is showing the others HOW TO BEAT Hillary. Out here in the boondock-suburbs, Trump “tells it like it is”. One old stranger told me a week ago at the shopping center, and I quote, “He’s just like me; he tells it like it is!” I’m pretty sure that this woman barely had two nickels to rub together.

The Donald is just like… The Ronald! Just like Reagan, an actor who made it seem like he was telling it, “Like it is”.

You can bet that the next GOP debate will have very different performances from all of them, because this is the real “takeaway”. Thus the next primary debate will be worth watching too (against my general rule; I don’t watch the primaries), because all of the candidates will be more comfortable with the format, and ready to “up their games”. The next debate may well predict who the Republican nominee will be, simply by how quick and deft each one is, at absorbing the Trumpian lesson of this last one.

If (when) Trump drops out, Fox should seat him on the question panel next to Megyn Kelly. Perhaps with Jennifer Lopez in the third chair. Fox will retain its high ratings throughout the next year. Money in the bank!

“He’s hitting a ceiling at about 25-30% support among GOP voters, and will probably hit around the same ceiling for all voters. Thus, he cannot win the general election. But during the GOP primaries he can hold a commanding plurality until most of the other candidates are exhausted, which will not be for several months to come. ”

I think this is a good point and would add that – whichever GOP candidate does emerge from the fray – perceptually that will have the advantage of “being better than Trump” which will serve to move their particular flavor of conservatism towards center even if it is most decidedly not center.

Something of the same effect happened last time for the GOP (in my opinion) – the presence and strong running of the likes of Gingrich and Santorum made Romney look nearly palatable by comparison, even if he most assuredly was not.

Trump doesn’t respond to reality. He doesn’t compromise with reality. He makes reality. People respect that.

Even when I was just a liberal, I found the worship of rich people bizarre. And this was in the 1970s, when it was far less out there than it is now. But having moved much, much further left, I now find it downright dangerous and very close to insane. There is simply no logical reason to elevate rich people above anyone else, for any reason, at any time, and especially not when it comes to “leading” the nation politically.

Same goes for business people in general. They almost always (with rare exceptions) in direct conflict with “public policy,” and that Americans don’t see this is beyond obvious is deeply troubling. The mechanics of our economic system, and all the incentives built in, will always be in diametric opposition to the needs and dreams of the majority. As in, “public policy” that helps society collectively hurts business interests and owners. It can force them to:

1. Lose their (irrationally bestowed) grip on power
2. Lose their massive lead in wealth and income
3. Pay workers more, which means ownership pockets less
4. Pay higher taxes to support societal good
5. Reduce pollution and waste, which costs them more
6. Cease the treatment of workers and consumers as mere things, etc. etc.

To name just a few things that come immediately to mind.

Trump, for example, never could have made his boatload of cash without stealing from workers and consumers, and getting the government to pay most of his business costs. He never could have come back from his umpteen bankruptcies if not for government largesse which has always been primarily directed at the rich.

And that last point? This, too, is where the American plutocrat and their shills trick the American people all too easily. They’ve convinced a majority of the population that the government gives and gives to the poor, taking from them, “real Americans,” in the bargain. In reality, business interests strip wealth from workers and consumers, radically suppress their wages and benefits, and get government to cover their butts when things blow up. It’s never, ever been true that our government devotes that much largesse to the needy. We’ve always ranked well behind most of the OECD nations in government transfers and “legs up” for the poor and working class.

This is classic deflection, redirection and scapegoating of tens of millions of Americans, and our woefully ignorant and, frankly stupid population buys into it. Trump is just one more in the line of, yes, “fascists” selling the lie about the wonders of permanent hierarchies, and he all but says tens of millions of human beings in this country are “vermin.”

I may have missed it in her piece, but the real aspect of “joy” is this: All too many Americans want someone to slam and bash and attack the people they think are causing them to suffer. It’s vicarious revenge (and Nietzschean resentiment), through electronics, and it’s the primary reason for the success of all right wing talk and Fox News. Nothing else puts conservative butts in seats like a chance to see someone on their team go (rabidly) on the offensive against the people and things that audience wants to see viciously attacked.

In effect, they’re trapped by their ideology of irrational individualism. They’ve bought into the myth that collective action is evil — and only done by the “far left” — so even though they personally feel helpless, they typically won’t support collective action to undo that helplessness. This is why they love individual hate/fearmongers, like Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter and their kinfolk in government. They can delude themselves that they’re right with their right-wing ideology, that they haven’t succumbed to “left wing” collective action, and it’s still the Randian hero, fighting for them against the incredibly powerful, immoral, unwashed hordes.

And I think America is “exceptional” here as well, though this has obvious echoes with all fascist regimes through history. The ability to turn night into day, up into down, and tag the truly powerless as “the most powerful and dangerous” in any society. Trump has tapped into this American ID quite successfully, whether he realizes it or not. The tragedy is that his followers don’t see this and never will.

As far as I’ve been able to make out, jouissance is something like free play of mental and emotional energies, so Trump has the wealth and power and personality to let himself “go with the flow” and get away with it, and as Plume points out, the personality to be recognized by a significant number of people as doing just this, because that’s what they think anyone would want to do if they could.

TM @27:

“Enjoyment” is a weak translation of “jouissance”. “Jouir” in French slang means “to come”, so the idea is people “getting their rocks off”, if only via imaginary identifications, and is to be associated not simply with pleasure, but with ambivalence toward pleasure and its lack or deprivation, thus with conflict, antagonism and even hatred. Now I personally think this whole approach is really just reductive mechanistic psychologism, no matter how intellectually suped up its theoretical superstructure. But one should be aware of what one is reading.,

As far as “fascism”, I use the Roger Griffin definition, think it was a pretty contingent reaction to (and form of) early 20th Fordist modernity, and not necessarily (tho usually in practice) racist at all. The last is controversial and even provocative nowadays, I guess current theory says racism created “whiteness,” and I believe that racism and bigotry starts at the “Us” and not at the “Them.” Fascism starts with a forgotten or submerged history to be recovered, a solidarity affinity identity that has been denied or suppressed, and then looks for the Other to motivate action.

Roger Griffin describes fascism as “a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism”.[29] Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: “(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence”.[30] .

I think Brasillach is not quite as marginal a figure as David @30 says. As an NYT review from 15 yrs ago of the Alice Kaplan book (linked in the OP) mentions, he was the most prominent collaborationist intellectual to be tried as the war was ending. (I can give a link to the review if anyone wants.)

According to wikipedia, Brassillach was a figure of controversy because he was executed by firing squad after the war because of his pronouncements rather than his acts. His many prominent defenders included some on the left:

The sentence caused an uproar in French literary circles and even some of Brasillach’s political opponents protested. Resistance member and author François Mauriac, whom Brasillach had savaged in the press, circulated a petition to Charles De Gaulle to commute the sentence. This petition was signed by many of the leading lights of the French literary world, including Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, Albert Camus, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Arthur Honegger, Jean Anouilh and Thierry Maulnier.[19] De Gaulle did not comply and Brasillach was executed by firing squad in Montrouge. It has been argued that De Gaulle refused to spare Brasillach because the author had on numerous occasions called for Georges Mandel’s execution. De Gaulle admired Mandel, a prominent conservative politician (who happened to be Jewish), and who was murdered by the Milice during the closing days of the Occupation.[20] Brasillach called out “Long live France anyway!” (“Vive la France quand même!”) immediately before his execution.[

Layman@38: “What kidneystones says is that it can’t be fascist because it’s popular”.

No, what he’s saying is that the idea of selective immigration control is popular among many people who are in no other respects evenly remotely fascists: and if you and those like you persist in denigrating their idea as “fascist” you are not even slightly helping your cause.

Your response to my parallel with Hitler’s advocacy of non=smoking vegetarianism and classical architecture is so way off-beam that I cannot be bothered to reply.

Should I have added that Hitler was also very much in favour of autobahnen: US interstate highways, UK motorways?

I do not know if you ever came across the German joke:
Hitler liked Wagner, so for fifty years no more Wagner.
Hitler liked classical architecture, so for fifty years no more classical architecture.
Gott sei dankte, Hitler did not like Wienerschnitzel.

You don’t have to allude to French philosophers to make the point. The girls aren’t the only ones who just want to have fun. A tremendous amount of the right-wing populist program is simply self indulgence, which is why the endless AM radio complaint against feminists/environmentalist/public health advocates/liberals is that they are party poopers. “Go ahead and do it” would be an appropriate slogan, whether we’re talking about burning coal, driving SUVs, persecuting minority we dislike, or using our military toys to run the world. It’s powerfully appealing and not just to trailer trash—in this country we have lumpen billionaires to go along with the lumpen just plain folks.

In fact, it would be hard to argue against this approach to people who somehow think it’s practical, if America really could make the whole world its bitch, if there wasn’t a hangover after the binge. The Germans, a great many of ’em anyhow, had a bang up time in the 30s and even the first year of the war: and when the whole thing went to Hell, they didn’t blame Hitler for what he wanted but for not pulling it off. Moral arguments are pretty weak tea and all the less effective because the right co-opted morality long ago. Their religiosity may not be the opium of the masses, but it is definitely their Coca Cola—hysteria about abortion, for example, is obviously deeply gratifying and also serves as an alternative to taking responsibility for the sufferings of those who, having already been born, are on their own.

The comments about the feeling of unreality evoked by Trump’s performances left me groping towards a witticism about ‘trump l’oeil’. Couldn’t make it. I’ll leave it for Holbo.

“Is there a reliable parallel in history to Trump?:

Actually several depending on how ardently your views on particular topics. Certainly Pat Buchanon and Ross Perot had similar bombastic verbal styles as did Howard Dean from the left side of the aisle. The 1976 version of Reagan had some similarities as well. Ralph Nader held similarly polarizing views on certain topics though tended towards the dry on oratory. Sarah Palin was every bit as ridiculous and had probably about 1/3 the substance of Trump. Even a fellow named James Carter had the same open and straightforwardness that many found endearing and refreshing (and a minority found incredibly incincere).

Obviously none of these are Trump, each candidate is his/her own, but they all captured a lot of public attention and interest in much the same way as Trump has managed.

I’d add all of these had a range of professed politics – it was only in a couple of cases we got to find out how the reality differed from the sales pitch.

I think any Democrat who dismisses Trump, fails to take him seriously, is living in a fool’s paradise. This even though it seems impossible — right now — to conceive of him as the nominee.

All-time interesting thread, except for kidneywhatever dissing Corey — a supercilious detour both wrong and unnecessary.

Layman@62: no, I’m not being paid by kidneystones, or anyone else. To suggest that someone you disagree with is only saying what they do because they have been hired to do so is unworthy of one hoping for a reputation as an intelligent and non-despicable commentator.

I was commenting on kidneystones’ actual words, and on your disparagement of them: not on the ravings of Trump, for whom I have no sympathy.

Stephen @ 69: “To suggest that someone you disagree with is only saying what they do because they have been hired to do so is unworthy of one hoping for a reputation as an intelligent and non-despicable commentator.”

It wasn’t a serious suggestion; just a way of asking that you let kidneystones speak for himself.

“I was commenting on kidneystones’ actual words, and on your disparagement of them: not on the ravings of Trump, for whom I have no sympathy.”

Here are his actual words: “In case you missed it, controlled immigration is in, open borders is out, for many on the left, the center, and the right. There’s nothing remotely fascist about that, sorry.”

Note that I quoted them, in my response to which you objected. The plain reading of his words is that something is popular, thus not fascist. If that is not the intent, then the second sentence is unrelated to the first, and there’s no argument at all, just 2 unrelated assertions. I admit this is a possibility – that kidneystones offered no argument here – but that hardly improves things.

There are many non-fascist reasons to oppose open border. Having a guaranteed income or generous welfare in your country, for one; not crashing wages for nonspecialist workers; realising that integrating tons foreigners who don’t speak the local language is damn hard; and others I’ll leave to your imagination.

Nazi comparisons rarely make a case stronger

What makes an analysis weaker is not calling stuff what it is. A bigger goof, in fact, is the oddly squeamish reluctance (particularly in the US) to call fascism by its name, as if it were some almost impossible and rare, or delicate, bacterium; or as if it’s peculiar to Germany and Italy in the 1920s-40s. Fascism – the sentiments thereof – is not actually very rare, is it?

“There are many non-fascist reasons to oppose open border. Having a guaranteed income or generous welfare in your country, for one; not crashing wages for nonspecialist workers; realising that integrating tons foreigners who don’t speak the local language is damn hard; and others I’ll leave to your imagination.”

It strikes me that these are all variations on reasons the fascists cited – they all amount to a form of theft of wages or entitlements from the ‘deserving’ citizens or a failure to assimilate thus degrading the national culture, etc. I don’t say you mean them that way – I’m sure you don’t! – just that they are the obvious rationale to put forward even if one’s real reasons are more base.

I usually try not to draw parallels to Hitler because his regime was such an outlier that it isn’t often a good exemplar. As my Dad used to say, the Nazis were so bad they gave fascism a bad name. On the other hand, Nazi propaganda appealed to motives that are generically human and its methods are certainly adaptable to other purposes than gassing Jews. For example, there really was a lot of Hollywood in it; and whatever else the Germans were promised, they were promised a bang up good time with nifty costumes and neat weapons. Many accounts of the era focus on the anti-Semitism as if hatred for the Jews and fear of what they were supposedly doing to the German people was at the root of the Nazi movement, but the great thing about the creation of a radically evil enemy is that it excuses pleasurable aggression, just as the great thing about SPECTRE is that it gives you a license to kill. (Disclaimer: I am not claiming that Albert Broccoli was a Nazi.)

Obviously the logic of deporting people to exterminate them is very significantly different than the logic of deporting them to live somewhere else. Anyone you deport to exterminate is a crime, but if you are deporting people to live somewhere else it probably is more humane to keep families together and not deprive children of their parents. (Outside of the question of whether you should deport them at all). A lot of parents would voluntarily choose to keep their kids with them if the family was really being deported to live elsewhere, but none would in the case of extermination. So I don’t Corey’s claim that this is a useful analogy even though the cases are unlike really holds water; it’s not just that the cases are unlike but the logic of the extermination case goes in totally the opposite direction of the moral logic in the case of ‘ordinary’ deportation.

I also wonder if the histrionic reaction to arguments for responsible increases in immigration restriction has helped to open up space for rhetoric like Trumps and extreme proposals like mass deportation. It also seems legitimate to me to ask whether we should revisit birthright citizenship in some way — the framers of the constitution clearly never contemplated people flying in from China for a one-week vacation to give birth.

I would call this going along with the German occupiers, not resisting them.

So everyone who didn’t actively resist was a collaborator, that’s not how the word is used.

And semantics aside, that’s some weak tea you got on Sartre,

Berlusconi strikes me as a better comparison for Trump than midcentury fascism. Of course Berlusconi was something of a Mussolini fan.

Kyle C 08.17.15 at 11:42 pm @ 84 —
Mussolini summed up fascism as ‘Everything within the state, nothing outside of the state, nothing against the state.’ We all have been moving in that direction for some time, so there is nothing peculiar to Trump about it. Indeed, he is rather a loose cannon, and if he actually seems likely to be nominated, the really important people will no doubt send somebody to clue him in — if they have not done so already. Theatrical bluster tells us very little about what’s actually going on.

Is Trump really Colbert in a Trump suit?

“A supporter held aloft a copy of Trump’s 1988 book The Art of the Deal, and Trump said, in an exquisite parody of political faux populism, “That’s my second favorite book of all time. Do you know what my first is? The Bible. Nothing beats the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible. Not even The Art of the Deal. You are going to love President Trump.” http://www.newrepublic.com/art…

Corey @76
almost no one has dealt with the actual point of comparison that I raised: again, a stated commitment to deport not just immigrants, but their children too, for the stated reason of preserving family integrity, but with the added bonus of getting rid of more of them

Vichy (or Brasillach at any rate) invoked the defense of preserving family integrity to soften their actions/positions, but did the Nazis themselves invoke that defense?
It is, in some ways, pedantic to distinguish between Vichy and the Nazis, but I don’t think excessively so. Vichy was a puppet govt in important respects, but as I understand it also had some autonomy (at least until the Germans moved into the Vichy zone in late 1942). So I think what you’re drawing is an analogy to Vichy and fascism, but not specifically to the Nazis.

CDT @ 90

“They have to go,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” of families living in the U.S. illegally and having a child, adding: “What they’re doing, they’re having a baby. And then all of a sudden, nobody knows … the baby’s here.”

Seems pretty clear.

Trump is just the latest in the series of vulgarian idols which includes Reagan, Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Their appeal is less the policies they advocate than their disdain for political norms, which makes them seem attractively genuine, even though they’re basically performers. Or so argues Melanie Tannenbaum:

Even in the face of evidence that suggests he really might be “flip-flopping” as much as any other “ambiguous” candidate, it still makes psychological sense that many people perceive Trump as being more honest and credible than his opposition — and, once again, the reason why lies in the fact that people see what he’s saying as atypical of most politicians. In one redditor’s words, “He is someone who dares to speak the truth about those topics that are being avoided by the politicans which is also great and unprecedented.” In other words, he says things that aren’t what you’d expect for a politician to say.

There’s always a market for taking the politics out of politics.

Via Charles Pierce, here’s the very serious Ron Fournier from the National Journal on one of the weekend talk shows:

This is about an angry America, a very anxious America, that has been let down by the political system, that knows nobody’s paying attention to them, that know politicians only care about winning, don’t care about them. And it’s — it’s an electorate that is part of a big social change with this little thing called the Internet where they’re — they’re now used to major disruption institutions. They now know they have the power to bring down the media and change our business, to change the retail industry, to change the banking industry. They’ve seen great change in society and they want it in politics. So if Trump flames out tomorrow or if he flames out after two terms, God help us, this — this — what he represents, what he reflects, this anger and anxiety on this demand for disruption, is not going to go away until somebody real, incredible and positive and forward looking changes politics. That’s the only way we’re going to stop this Trump phenomenon. Because that’s what the phenomena is. It’s not about Trump, it’s about this country.

Is birthright citizenship about “anchor babies” from the south or rich Chinese doing “medical tourism”? Neither is a particularly compelling reason for birthright citizenship.

@84: Agreed on fascism. But the specific analogy was with politicians in Vichy France who sent whole families to the Nazis, pretty clearly (even at the time) to be murdered. That’s rather different from sending someone looking for work in the US back to their town in Mexico, in ways sufficiently strong to make the analogy not enlightening.

“There is definitely freedom on the executive side to do some pretty arbitrary things to illegal immigrants, but changing birthright citizenship really would require a direct constitutional amendment, quite apart from how incredibly unpopular it would be. ”

If a President can kill an American citizen eating breakfast in Yemen, solely on his own authority and without oversight or constraint by any other branch of government, surely a President can send an American citizen to live in Guatemala or Hong Kong.

Taking up arms against your government opens you up to things that are otherwise illegal; that’s the basis of things like the drone strikes in Yemen. War breaks all sorts of rules, including fundamental ones like the murder taboo. It does not follow that the public approves of all cases of state-sanctioned violence.

“Taking up arms against your government opens you up to things that are otherwise illegal; that’s the basis of things like the drone strikes in Yemen.”

This rather begs the question: If the President says you took up arms, and can say that in secret, who can gainsay him (or her)?

That aside, I think it rather more likely than less that a hypothetical Republican President will discover the executive authority to deport citizens. Maybe not Jeb!, but certainly any one of the others in the race.

kidneystones @106,

The unhappy blue-hairs, disproportionately female and/or well-educated, who did a lot of the organizing of the Tea Party were unhappy with a President bailing out banks and allowing the same banks to seize homes, all funded by taxpayers who played by the rules.

Actually, the tea party movement started for quite different reasons. It had nothing to do with bank bailouts, and every Republican congress critter who later was considered a “tea party” member voted for them. The movement was actually started by Rick Santelli, on MSNBC, who galvanized huge support after his TV rant on the floor of the Chicago stock exchange. Only in America do we get “populist” movements started by millionaire TV personalities, with the backing of stock brokers and billionaire sugar daddies. But that’s what happened. The movement started because some people were outraged by the idea being floated by the Obama administration that we might help our fellow Americans a little, drowning in mortgage debt.

From there, it spread to an anti-ACA movement, which is where billionaires like the Kochs really kicked in. They managed to crush any possibility of a single payer system before negotiations even began, on their way to making sure government subsidized corporate profits in the guise of “liberal public policy.” And, because righties are smart enough to know that all politics is temporary, they have relentlessly demonized even their own Heritage Foundation “solution,” which is what Obama implemented. In effect, they’ve moved to the right of themselves in order to block any kind of “progressive” action.

In short, the myth of the tea party is that they were ever opposed to the bailouts, or “fighting for the little guy.” It was always all about “outrage” at even the idea of helping down-on-their-luck neighbors. Again, only in America will you find “populist” movements that are supported and sustained by billionaires, for billionaires, and against people truly in need.

110. I really like your style, but you’re so hopeless biased and invested in Koch Konspiracy Tales that I don’t see much point in bothering to respond, other than to point out the parts where you’re right. Santelli, check. Kochs, check-but only to fund spontaneous right-wing grass roots movements. You’ll need to contact Theda Skopcal and Vanessa Williams and tell them your bellybutton lint fact-checked their 2011 study of the Tea Party and found it seriously wanting, especially their chapter on independent groups popping up all over the country, the threat they posed to the Republican establishment, and the efforts of a whole lot of money men, including the Kochs, to corral and direct this gang of loose cannons. The movement has changed and is now significantly more male, less-educated, and more evangelical.

I don’t recall Democrats doing anything but gloating, promising to close Gitmo, and patting themselves on the back from 2008 to 2010. Course selling out to Goldman Sachs, big pharma, and big insurance kept them busy. But this is seriously off topic.

I spent a good amount of time reviewing the polls I can get hold of. A great deal will depend on whether Dems can get young voters to the polls. That’s the group that most strongly supports immigrants. But even across the population, 72 percent support some path to citizenship or permanent residency. I’d say the Democrats, not Corey, are happy to keep Trump the discussion rather than Dem opposition to the Iran deal, Israeli opposition to the Iran deal, and the steadily growing number of classified email and lies coming from Hillary Rodham Clinton, the last Democrat I believed I could support. I hope Sanders goes the distance, but I’d be content with any candidate with a shred of integrity.

Ordering soldiers to deport American citizens in defiance of certain court orders to the contrary would be an actual coup, something that hasn’t happened in more than 200 years in the US. I think that it’s a safe bet to say that this isn’t going to happen, barring some cataclysm.

There is no such constitutional barrier against deporting illegal immigrants, however, so it is much easier to visualize an increase in something that is already pretty common now. Even for them, there is a surprisingly dense set of legal precedents that would tie any Draconian federal moves up in complex litigation.

For a sense of how popular this view is among the Republican electorate, both Rand Paul and Scott Walker are in favor of ending birthright citizenship.

So everyone not of Native American descent needs to prepare to leave? I believe I am eligible for Canadian citizenship but not sure where my spouse & children will go. Of course once the First Peoples see what is happening in the Iroquois Confederation, I mean the United States, they may take steps…

Marc,
Can’t reply in detail from phone but the actual live Tea Party types I work with will talk your ear off about using their gun collections to fight off a U.S. Government turned tyrannical. By which they mean librul, but I would think hauling Citizens off to actual mass detention camps would fit their definition. Right kidneystones?

This from Republican Presidential candidate Cruz is typical:

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/sen-cruz-2nd-amendment-fundamental-check-government-tyranny

@106

“At 400,000 per year x 2, that’s still less than a million per year, less than .03 per cent of the population.”

0.3

“Again, the point that I’m arguing for is pretty simple: there really are limits to what a President can do, regardless of what rhetoric they use for their followers. ”

Which I think is where Corey’s OP started: no, there aren’t any limits to what could happen. We like to think that in the U.S. there is a natural brake but Kansas & Wisconsin are showing that may not be the case.

there really are limits to what a President can do, regardless of what rhetoric they use for their followers. “

There are limits to what a president can do at a particular time. Those limits can change, though. Alas.

Marc: Revoking birthright citizenship is no more within the power of the executive than deciding that we’re not having elections any more.

Probably much too late for me to say, “better not give them any ideas”.

If we are distinguishing real threats from implausible ones, it is more plausible to imagine that elections would become purely ceremonial and/or completely rigged than that we would stop having them altogether. I don’t know that that represents any kind of practically important restriction on the strategic space. We could have the situation we have now, where the absence of mass-membership organization and moderately sophisticated media propaganda mean that many people regard voting as futile or inconsequential, and most people who do vote, essentially vote at random for candidates selected by plutocrats and the votes may, or may not, actually be counted accurately.

The Constitutional barriers that exist are not the words of the document, but in the system of checks and balances that channel political ambition in such a way that political coalitions are transitory and ephemeral, and means of opposition, criticism and forced rotation in office remains available. If any political coalition, whether cohesive because of class, economic interest or factional allegiance, should secure its own permanence and eliminate the institutional refuges of opposing groups and philosophies and their means of exercising power to check excess by those in authority, we cannot fall back in hope alone, on mere language or tradition.

It is naive, as well as ahistorical, to imagine, say, that a motivated Supreme Court could not declare a provision of the Constitution itself as unconstitutional — it’s been done before. Taney’s infamous Dred Scot opinion did so twice, as I recall. It was only the political capacity to organize an overwhelming political force, ready to do violence on an enormous scale, that enacted corrective provisions. Currently sitting Justices oppose key provisions of those enactments, and regard their capacity to invoke them while suspending the electoral process to be a fine joke.

The Executive has decided that requirements of due process and protections against arbitrary imprisonment, torture or execution simply do not constrain, because “terrorism”. The problem is not that the law is not clear enough. Rather, the problem is that there is no political formation inclined to enforce those provisions politically and able to access resources organizationally and institutional means to do so.

The visceral loathing and contempt of those with one set of personal political identities for those with another isn’t just a symptom of political dysfunction — it is the synthesized means of that dysfunction — it prevents effective populist coalition-building and opposition to the elite party.

Layman @ 123: This state of affairs exists because the executive violated the law and suffered no consequences. We looked forward, not backward, and to make matters worse we ended the torture not by enforcing the existing laws but instead by issuing an order that it stop; allowing many to pretend that it was legal.

Yes.

But, also, many partisans pretend Obama does no wrong. That he ended “torture” by executive fiat, supposedly, satisfies them. Since there have been no prosecutions — thru much of the national security deep state, very little rotation in office as Obama appointed much the same cast of characters in top posts — we don’t really know that much of anything has changed, let alone that what little that has changed, will stay changed.

(Visiting from CPP.) I have heard the following take several times recently:

The big government of Obama has caused the increase in disparity of wealth distribution by: picking winners among corporations (by using corporate welfare,) looking the other way as immigrants take middle class jobs away from main street citizens, upsetting the playing field by regulation and protecting consumers, and, above all, by eliminating incentives for holding jobs–incentives of the sort that create a permanent class of “takers” living high on the benefits hog.

imo This ‘all toppings’ political pizza fits on Trump’s plate and sums all the resentments, except for abortion/sexy parts and Shari’a law takeover/coddling of ISIS.

Trump has already come close to ‘hand’s off SS and Medicare,’ so I wouldn’t today say he cannot be the nominee. In fact, he may well announce that both programs are obviously successes and have sustained mom and dad’s independence in their old age. This would be a big score!

I do not think Trump is looking for confirmation, or needing approval, love, or assent. My opinion is that he wants to be the best King the USA never had, and that the crown is, for him, simply there at the end of his rainbow, waiting for him. A few years back Charlie Sheen put this zeitgeist sharply: Winning, winners!

Trump believes himself knight on steed and calvary rolled into one. He is bonkers.

Lenoxus,
“seriousness” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that formulation.

@132.

Yes. To what extent does a morbid fascination with the future (“Trump’s bringing fascism to America”) persist as a psychological defense against despair for the present?

Domestic surveillance missed your list as well: another example where laws suddenly become inconvenient and thus lack any enforcement.

How quiet and submissive, how isolated and depressed, are even many prosperous neighborhoods in the States. There too you can see that a dystopian future has already arrived.

@119 Hi Cranky. Yes, that sounds about right re: guns, citizen’s rights, and camps. You’re not suggesting that’s Santelli’s view, are you? The personnel and politics of movements change.

@22 CDT. I like Thurber, so thanks for this. My own comments could use some improvement and clarity. I’ve reviewed my intemperate remarks towards Corey and apologized in a comment lost in moderation. Doesn’t hurt to do so again. That said, my position stands.

I respect Corey and assume that you, CDT, know what you’re talking about.

Robert Goldstein notes in Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-century France, p. 203: ‘The National Assembly elected during the final stages of the Franco-Prussian War in February 1871 was dominated by royalists, but they were divided into two monarchist wings – adherents of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830 and of the Orleanist dynasty overthrown in 1870. The monarchist factions were able to unite on May 24, 1873, to force the resignation of National Assembly President Adophe Thiers, who, although highly conservative, was viewed as ‘soft’ on republicanism.”

One can make the case that with Communards at one end of the political spectrum post 1871 and monarchists, such as Thiers, at the other, Thiers can be called “nineteenth-century France’s on-again, off-again, penultimate reactionary.” I confess I ignored/missed the meaning rich ‘off-again’ caveat in Corey’s post. Corey, however, refers to a Thiers as an historian, not as a politician, and here, too, Corey has a case to make. Thiers isn’t Louis Blanc. That said, Thiers is not, in my view, on the extreme edge of the political right by virtue of Thiers life-long commitment to parliamentary democracy and to limiting the authority of the monarchy – a commitment that cost this ‘highly conservative’ politician his position as President of the National Assembly.

My own familiarity with Thiers is as an enemy of France’s real 19th century reactionaries – the supporters of Charles X, and perhaps this is what Corey is referring to in his “off-again” caveat. Thiers remained their enemy, despite holding views many today rightly find repugnant. Judging him by the standards of his time, however, Thiers is no reactionary, certainly in the first half of the 19th century. Here’s Daniel Rader in The Journalists and the July Revolution in France, p.112:” The leader of the new militants, indeed one of the most effective newspapers in French history, was the National. The brilliant success of this journal may be credited to the three young men who served as its chief editors: Adolphe Thiers, François Mignet, and Armand Carrel.”

So, throughout his life, Thiers was committed to destroying or constraining the authority of France’s real 19th century reactionaries, who I would identify as those in the public, military, religious, and political sphere who supported the absolute unlimited authority of the monarchy and of the church. I see the real 19th century reactionaries, at least in the first half, as the social critics/scientists: de Bonald, de Maistre, and de Gobineau. Even at his most conservative, Thiers does not belong in this camp.

Doubtless Corey knows all this and it was quite wrong of me to suggest otherwise.

An incredibly sharp Lacanian deconstruction of the Trump phenomenon. Bravo!

“Birthright citizenship” seems to be code here for the USA’s ius soli regime. But ius sanguinis regimes are also forms of “birthright citizenship”, that is, they confer citizenship rights on people in virtue of the facts of their birth (just who they are born to, rather than the physical location). Both pure methods give rise to significant injustices where some people who ought to get citizenship rights are excluded and some people who have a weak claim are included. So the tiny baby transported across the Mexican border into the US, who grows up all the rest of her life in the US, is excluded, whereas the Canadian, delivered as an emergency in the nearest hospital (just across the border) is included. Nearly all states employ a mix of ius soli and ius sanguinis these days.

Trump wants a more restrictive citizenship law that favours those of anglo descent over, particularly, hispanics. That would indeed be bad and should be resisted. But there’s no reason to think that ius soli, as such is superior to or less arbitrary than ius sanguinis. I happen to think that Carens’s social membership criterion is a necessary complement to both, so that anyone who is a de facto member of a society should be recognized as a political member of it also, as of right. That way, the Mexican baby gets included.

@Corey yes, obviously that’s right.

@148 Hi Corey, Thanks for this. I think we’ll probably disagree on the Commune, but it’s well past my area. I’m familiar with the general contours of France’s nationalist-colonialist policies from 1830 on, and don’t regard Thiers in any way atypical of a community that absorbed and acted on Gobineu’s race theories. And, with respect, I think it important to situate Thiers in a world where the suppression of the Commune, bloody as it was, was broadly supported by a generally reactionary bourgeois class, if I have this right. In that sense, I don’t seek to exculpate Thiers, but to suggest that his behavior was predictable given the politics of the time. Certainly, the real reactionaries wanted/always want more blood. I see analogies with Bush, other republicans, and many democrats vis-a-vis Iraq. I think a fairly broad swath of the American political class would have done something similar and perhaps bloodier, and with broad levels of support across the political spectrum. Was Thiers a prisoner of his circumstances? I’m not remotely qualified to say. Finally, you’re on firm ground linking France’s extreme right across generations, certainly from 1824 to 1924, in the cases I’m familiar with, right up to Vichy. I confess I can’t forgive the Communards for torching the Tuileries, destroying significant sections of the archives, and for trying to burn the Louvre to the ground. But that’s me.

Oops I used a bad word and was immoderated… Try it again:

1. As to right and left populism, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street arose at approximately the same time for approximately the same reasons. They are variants upon populist rage at plutocratic machinations, as variously understood by the protesters. Point is, the GOP realized an opportunity to build Tea astroturf, while OWS had to manage on its own. Furthermore, OWS took the unwise tactic of camping-out in public and until — what? The Whole System capitulates? Who knows? …which makes you look ridiculous, but is good money for the portable-outhouse companies.

2. More restrictive immigration is on the menu for both parties. America’s Grandmom — kinder, gentler, Iron Hillary — and her camp by now must have fletched-out a softier-soapy proposal. To respond after the GOP primary bloodbath. See how the polls look.

Trump, on the other hand, just made a big mistake. He moved “a bridge too far” with the Trump Mexican Wall. (Does he envision his name plastered across it, like a casino in Atlantic City?) Because he is going to have to back down in about three months, and then he will be regarded as untrustworthy as any other blathersome trimmer.

This prediction (I am a scientist as well as a mystic) follows from “Lee’s Three-Month Rule of Emotions in Politics (and Emotions in Anything Else)” [I should have patented this!] whereby emotions always deflate, or even flip into the opposite, in about three months. Because that’s what emotions always do. Because your reptilian brain wants to go and lay on some other flat rock. Then you’re like, “Oh, god — You still love me?! Go away! Change the channel!”

So I predict that after about three months of public debate, the Trump Mexican Wall proposal will be FELT, by 60-70% of the population, as such a mean-spirited, blotchy stain on the history of the country (or at least, on the self-proclaimed spirit of the country), that most ‘Mericans will demur, “There must be another way!”

Indeed a majority may already feel this way… So the illegal immigration problem has to be solved in some other way…

Indeed that appears to be one of the few distinguishing characteristics of Jeb Bush… Walker on the other hand apparently just signed on to the Wall of Trump. I’m not going to bother to raise a finger to type, to search, to verify that. Because it wouldn’t surprise me, whatever he or any of them chose to do, now. The contestants having displayed themselves, it’s all recalculation from here on out.

But immigration will be an issue that sends the Latinos scurrying to the Dems in this election, the Trumpster has accomplished that much.

3. Democrats have been moving to support of Social Security and Medicare since some of us on the interwebs insisted to Pelosi’s regime that the Dems turn down Dubya’s move to privatize Social Security in 2005, as a way to make a new (old) banner for the Democratic Party. The fact that Trump could make even the smallest move onto this turf shows how idiotic and beholden to Wall St. (and Reaganomics) many (or most) of the Democrats still remain. Shame on those particular craven anuses. The Democratic Party should have been out well in front of this, since we all advised it back in 2005.

Hillary should explain exactly WHY the economy will NOT be harmed by INCREASING Social Security. If she doesn’t understand that much economics, she shouldn’t be President.

CB 143: “But there’s no reason to think that ius soli, as such is superior to or less arbitrary than ius sanguinis.”

That seems a weird claim. Ius soli is definitely more inclusive and less arbitrary than ius sanguinis eve though it may not be inclusive enough. What is happening now is that Trump is trying to reframe the immigration debate from “should citizenship be more inclusive” (DREAM act) to “citizenship is already too inclusive and should be made more restrictive”. And he’s pretty successful.

137: My list is definitely incomplete, depressingly so. You are welcome LFC 136.

I can’t argue with paranoid fantasies, so I’m going to withdraw here.

Good Lord, but this place is frustrating at times.

kidneystones@149: the Paris Commune is well outside my area, too, but I thought that the National Assembly who supported the suppression of the Commune had been elected by universal male suffrage, not by the reactionary bourgeois class, and that the Commune was fairly unpopular with the mass of rural Frenchmen, who provided the troops that suppressed it.
Also, I had the impression that many of the Communards had no particular objection to bloodshed, as long as it was they who were doing the shedding.
Am I mistaken?

@156 Hi, Stephen. Corey’s far better qualified on this. There will be a mass of reasonably easy to access literature on this, so good luck.

Cheers!

@Layman “Children born to citizens are citizens regardless of where they’re born.”

Actually, that’s not quite right.

@Mdc … no that’s not correct. There are plenty of people in Korea and Vietnam who are the children of American citizens but who have no right to US citizenship, for example.

@ Chris Bertram

The distinction seems to be the marital status of the parents, and whether the citizen parent ever resided within the U.S. Children born to married parents, at least one of whom is a U.S. citizen who meets some past U.S. residency requirements, are U.S. citizens; though given the residency requirements, their children in turn may not be. I have no doubt that, as you say, some children of U.S. citizens are being excluded by those constraints. Still, I think it’s fair to say that the U.S. grants citizenship on the basis of both birth location and birth parentage, within some bounds.

I would like to turn Chris’ critereon around and say that every person should be a citizen of the place where they are most socialized. That is, come at it from the pov of the person rather than the state. The state needs its electorate, well and good. Not being a citizen of some state is clearly very bad, so there must be utility in citizenship. Too bad states these days are incompetent or downright abusive … hey, we don’t even have a word for it! … “parents” … to most of their “children”.

“Not just the marital status but also which of the parents is a US citizen.”

I don’t think that’s the case.

afraid so, @layman, or at least the hurdles to citizenship are higher if the father is the citizen, see

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States#Children_born_overseas_out_of_wedlock

@ Chris Bertram, I see, the gender of the citizen parent matters only in the case of out-of-wedlock children.

But there’s no reason to think that ius soli, as such is superior to or less arbitrary than ius sanguinis.

Per se. But currently we have a system where laws are applied on the basis of physical presence; in that context, ius soli is the only way to ensure that legal systems are responsive to the people they apply to.

tldr: there’s this thing called a “metic”. You may have heard of it.

@Collin Street “currently we have a system where laws are applied on the basis of physical presence; in that context, ius soli is the only way to ensure that legal systems are responsive to the people they apply to.”

Except it doesn’t, does it. Because there will inevitably be masses of people present on the territory who weren’t born on the territory but to whom the laws are applied. (Not to mention the fact that immigration laws apply to people who aren’t present). So whether you start with soli or sanguinis, you need to extend to include all those people.

@68: Respectfully, I think you have that ending wrong.

What happens is that bombastic artificial commentators for hire take over public discourse, drowning out legitimate speech. No police state required.

The creator of Waldo is arrested at the end, not because he lives in a police state but because he commits an actual crime–trying to vandalize a TV showing Waldo, still equally popular and harmful under someone else’s control. I think it’s meant to show that he’s hit rock bottom, not to comment on some dramatic off screen change in the government.

@Norwegian Guy. No. If you are a citizen of A who has moved to country B where you have a child, then if A is a ius sanguinis regime then your child will inherit your citizenship but if A has a ius soli regime they won’t.

This can lead to terrible problems when people move between jurisdictions with different systems, as children can end up stateless, or with no right to move back to the country of their parents. Or you can get whole families with a range of different citizenship who end up without the right to be in the same place.

“If you are a citizen of A who has moved to country B where you have a child, then if A is a ius sanguinis regime then your child will inherit your citizenship but if A has a ius soli regime they won’t.”

This describes me and my child exactly, except that he did in fact inherit my US citizenship. I guess because the parents were married? No sanguinem test was administered. But an unmarried American mother who gives birth abroad surely gives birth to a citizen, no?

The social membership notion seems like the right one to me. I can also see how a combination of sanguinis and soli standards might do a good job of approximating the social membership criterion in practice, a criterion whose application might otherwise be hard to pull off.

158: “Countries with a lot of emigration, on the other hand, would strip a lot of people of citizenship if they adopted a ius soli rule”

We are not I assume talking about this in the abstract. We started discussing this with respect to the US. Now the US has ius soli but somebody born to American citizen parents outside of the US isn’t excluded from citizenship (although that person is excluded from running for president – a silly and arbitrary restriction but it’s really the only one as far as I am aware).

The main argument for saying that ius sanguinis is less inclusive is that immigrant communities can be excluded from citizenship forever and the poster case for that actually happening is Germany (*). In the US, you can be brought into the country as a small child and live your whole life in the country as an alien without citizenship rights. But at least your children born in the country will be guaranteed to have citizenship. In Germany under ius sanguinis, an immigrant can be an Auslaender all their life, and their children and grand-children may also be Auslaender. The issue isn’t only how many individual people are excluded but also for how long.

(*) There have been certain reforms to German citizenship law. It is now at least easier for the children of immigrant parents to get German citizenship.

The Norwegian case isn’t really about ius solis and ius sanguinis. It’s a different kind of arbitrariness. “In other words, if you are born in Norway and then become a citizen of another country, then you automatically forfeit your Norwegian citizenship.”

157: “Also, I had the impression that many of the Communards had no particular objection to bloodshed, as long as it was they who were doing the shedding.
Am I mistaken?”

You are not just “mistaken”, you are totally ignorant.

@187 Thanks for this. “I’m taking the jobs, back from China. I’m taking the jobs back from Japan.”

That’s a message that can carry Trump a very, very long way.

John Kasich seems to be positioning himself as one of the “reasonable” folks on birthright citizenship, etc. But his criteria for undocumenteds are disturbing, and all too common with American politicians — in both parties. He says that as long as they’re “god-fearing” and “family-oriented,” among other preconditions, they should have that pathway to citizenship. Which means, of course, atheists, agnostics and “nones” need not apply, apparently.

He tried to soften these criteria somewhat in the following interview, which gives a general taste of them.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/john-kasich-hunting-undocumented-immigrants-america/

Would love to see the day when religious tests are no longer even hinted at in our political discourse. But I’m not holding my breath.

“(although that person is excluded from running for president…)”

I don’t think this is true.

Well, that was something I can I never expected to do – watch 47 minutes of DT. Have to say the hair really is something of a distraction. That said: he tramples people. He can win it. His core support is indifferent to anything but getting him elected.

Ok, it’s more complicated than I thought. Apparently the constitutional term “natural-born citizen” has been interpreted (sic!) to include “those born to U.S. citizen parents in foreign countries” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause). That incidentally shows that US citizenship is based on both ius solis and ius sanguinis.

As a caveat, I’ not sure that this question is really legally settled. The constitution is ambiguous at best.

Correction: the question is legally unsettled. Scotus has never clarified.

@TM “In Germany under ius sanguinis, an immigrant can be an Auslaender all their life, and their children and grand-children may also be Auslaender.”

This was the case, but those children born in Germany after 2000 are citizens, at least according to Carens, Ethics of Immigration, p. 19.

CB 202: That is essentially correct (subject to a host of bureaucratic rules). Germany gave up strict jus sanguinis and replaced it with a mixture of ius soli and ius sanguinis, as is probably the case in most countries. Citizenship law is now controlled by law only, which means that it can easily be changed (both to be more or less inclusive). The constitution used to declare that “Deutscher ist wer deutscher Abstammung ist” (Art. 116), now it just says redundantly that German is whoever has German citizenship.

Checking ius soli on Wiki (not necessarily authoritativw) I find:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes … children born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country’s territory
.
So all the deplorable Trump has to do is to get the Supreme Court to agree that illegal immigrants fall under the heading of “enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country’s territory”, and bingo …

I do hope I’m not giving him ideas.

Latest poll has 57% of Republicans expecting DT to be their nominee. Dems could run a corpse against Donald and still win, right? I wouldn’t bet on it.

I still think the establishment of both parties may yet manage to drive DTs number so far down he won’t get the necessary numbers, but it isn’t hard to construct a scenario such as this: Dems decide to bank on the demon we know HRC who has managed to make her husband sound like an honest man. Those supporting the Dem nominee are unmotivated and would much rather stay home. DT edges up to around 35 percent and then opens his own employment agency in all 5o states, promising to hire every unemployed person he can. And he’s got the cash to keep them on. They have to be willing to relocate to Arizona and Texas and be willing to learn how to build a new American monument – of a kind.
We’re closer to this reality than many suspect. Some can’t wait.

Kidneystones #190: “That’s a message that can carry Trump a very, very long way.”

Only as far as the other contenders will allow him. The US Presidential election is over a year away. The more likely fate for Trump is a stumble over policy.

Except for a few big things like the Trump Mexican Wall, Trump supports many Democratic positions. The other Republican contenders are likely to point this out. No doubt their “opposition research” is in full swing. Trump wants progressive taxes; he wants a single-payer for healthcare. He is or was a registered Democrat. Just this morning, Kevin Drum presents a list of some of Trump’s other Democratic leanings.

On the other hand, with the Trump Mexican Wall, Trump himself has made a rather big campaign mistake. It doesn’t look that way at the moment. Butas soon this becomes a real possibility rather than a metaphor, a lot of people are going to have second emotional thoughts, as I pointed out in my wild comment #151, now out of moderation thank you Corey.

So Trump is going to have to back down on the Wall at some point, though possibly not until the general election, if he makes it that far.

On the Iran agreement, in the speech video at #188 above , at first he’s against it — then later in the speech, he starts to hedge. (In fact there’s a lot of hedging in Trump, if you listen closely.)

On law and order, he sounds Nixonian. Someone should ask him whether he thinks cops should wear video cameras.

Basically what he’s selling is, “I am Mr. Fixit Businessman”. Ross Perot, all over again. This sort of populist surge might have worked three months before the election, but there’s over a year of examination, to come. You cannot keep selling, “I’m the one who knows how to do this.” You have to come up with policy details. Trump is going to have to start talking policy details, not “I’ll have to see what it is like, to do the details.”

If Trump becomes the Republican candidate, then he will make Hillary let her hair down, too. This doesn’t necessarily work well for him. She knows a lot. If Trump honors his own promise to keep “telling it like it is”, then she is going to make him admit that the main obstruction to good policy in the US is the Republican control of Congress. Because once you get into the facts, reality only looks one way.

The Republicans have won in the past by AVOIDING policy details. They would rather you just trusted their strong ability to judge things correctly! Elections have been dumbed-down to the point of mindlessness. But now Trump must provide the details on how he would make it all work differently. This will work against him, and it will work against the GOP establishment. Trump has truly opened up a can of worms for the GOP. He might take them all down with him.

“If Trump honors his own promise to keep “telling it like it is””

Very funny.

The more likely fate for Trump is a stumble over policy.

Mitt Romney too supported all policies for all people.

Anarcissie #212: “You’re being rational.”

My comment at #151 already explained the irrational reason why Trump Fever will decline: Lee’s Three Month Rule of Emotions in Politics. Almost never fails.

Combine that with the rational fact that Trump is going to have to flesh-out his policy ideas with specifics, and will start taking heat from his GOP rivals even before he ever gets to the general election. (Upon which, as aforementioned, 1. the GOP base realizes he’s a Democrat, and 2. the GOP establishment has a heart attack.)

Thus, I have mounted a holistic, leftbrain-rightbrain prediction of crash-and-burn!

Kidneystones #214: ” I never worry too much about sounding rational…”

Then you ought to know already that in about three months, most people will feel the direct opposite of the way they now feel, about many kinds of things.

Trump is a breath of fresh air, a new promise, a decisive dealmaker. In a little while, the reaction will be, “1. He couldn’t even make Atlantic City work, 2. half the things he says are lies just like the rest of ’em, and, 3. do I want to hear this blowhard on the TV news every night for the next 4 years?” …Irrational is the way people ARE.

@217 You do deserve credit, for wit and packaging. You’re making the safe bet. The premise of my position is these ‘safe bets’ are now seen by an increasing section of the population as an invitation to commit suicide. You’re also ignoring the possibility that Trumps supporters aren’t quite as ill-informed about Trumps views – flip-flops as you presume. I’m saying they don’t/won’t care. The appeal of Trump is his promise to get shit done. If Trump makes into next year all the posturing and critiques of principle (?) are going to evaporate when Trump says something to the effect of ‘this is me and what I’ve done- that’s her and what she’s done.’

Americans admire, as do many others, people who can make an immense amount of money. That’s really the only reason Trump is where he is now. The argument of that wealth and the power to create/acquire it will become more compelling as the race progresses, and not to republicans, who always grovel before wealth. That’s Trump’s ace – ‘good with words’ versus ‘good making money, building stuff’ – take your pick.